Of course it stings people; this is a war technology and it flies in the face of diplomacy and peace. We should be able to listen to our Beatles records in our VW bugs rather than collecting new weapons like a scarab collects shit. This ticks me off!

Soon other people will be doing the same thing, using DARPA's leadership, and terrorism using that method will be common.
In the entire history of the world, the U.S. government is the biggest originator of violence. The U.S. government has invaded or bombed 25 countries since the end of the 2nd world war.
The U.S. has more citizens in prison than farmers.
Weapons investors like Cheney and his friends and the Bush family want continuous war.

I'm sure we could wire directly into their nervous system and use an ArduinoBT to act as the brain. That way you just put a smartphone paired to the Arduino in the politico's pocket (which can also handle the heavier processing like translating text to be spoken into muscle movements) - you send commands via SSH, that's beamed to the "brain" and the politico says something smart, votes on a bill, goes on a killing spree, etc.

"They had to use the less-than-inconspicuous giant beetles because other species are too weak to take off with the weight of the necessary antenna and brain and muscle electrodes."

So, as technology advances: smaller electronics, radio parts, electromechanical components, power source -> smaller state-of-the-art RC toy. How long until you can have your own, remote-controlled army of fruit flies? 5 years? 10? 20?

This is really cool, but there seem to be some serious limitations. (Yes, I know that's kind of the definition of "prototype.")

"I'm sceptical about their ability to do surveillance for the following reason: no one has solved the power issue."

If you can't monitor what they're doing without being in the same room, then the range is very small. On the other hand, if this could be scaled up to larger animals, perhaps the power would cease to be an issue. However, it does seem like the relative lack of sophistication present in these insects is what allows this control, in part.

"It's not entirely clear how much control a beetle has over its own flight," Hedrick says. "If you've ever seen a beetle flying in the wild, they're not the most graceful insects."

Still, if they can get the surveillance issue figured out, this could represent a significant advance is Search and Rescue -- use insects or small animals to access places that humans can't (collapsed buildings, landslides, etc.)

If you can't monitor what they're doing without being in the same room, then the range is very small. On the other hand, if this could be scaled up to larger animals, perhaps the power would cease to be an issue.

If you can't monitor what they're doing without being in the same room, then the range is very small.

I can't find a cite right now (too much bogus news clogging google) but I believe the American embassy in Russia was spied upon (audio) by bouncing a directed radio wave off of a strip of metal embedded in a piece of artwork hung in one of the offices.

Okay, here is a citation [spybusters.com]. There was a microphone and an antenna in there. With a little MEMS work, though, you could put the microphone on a minuscule chip and bond it into a PCB to which wires were attached, and probably get the whole thing down to the size of a SMT LED. How did I get marked troll anyway?

We're still decades (centuries? maybe, if there's roadblocks) away from being able to create a sense organ for radio and training an animal to follow commands received via it. Of course, then someone will want the communication to two way so you can see through the bug's eyes, etc. Before you know it you've equipped a social insect with a massive evolutionary advantage which it uses to form the most fearsome hive mind, flies into space and takes over the galaxy. Gah, then we have to flight bugs in space

Why fight them? We can upload our minds into the process distributed inside the bugs' network and finally leave this god-forsaken corner of Virgo, and move into Shapley [wikipedia.org], where all the action is.

The Berkeley team has apparently been taken over, conquered if you will, by a master race of giant radio-controlled cyborg beetles.

It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Berkeley men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them. The beetles will soon be here.

This was first done in the 5th Element when Zorg's assistant spies on the president. Obviously, according to IP law, DARPA owes the creators of the 5th Element $500 Trillion (in standard RIAA dollars).

It is only a matter of time before the US uses these robotic bees to spy on "evil" nations' activities.I just had an interesting thought. If the same research happened in Iran or N. Korea, then the western media would have, by now, successfully crafted false stories like "Iran prepares robotic spies for spying on US". It is very sad that we are not seeing stories like "US preparing to dispatch robotic bees to all evil parts of the world."

Seriously, why do you have to live in a stupid bubble that says a total dictatorship backed up by concentration camps isn't evil? These countries aren't like, ho hum, the USA, where you call yourself oppressed because your daddy didn't give attention. These are countries where you call yourself oppressed because you said you were hungry and the 5 year plan said you had more food than ever, or you said that you were unhappy and Allah should provide.

In other words, "we're not as evil as them so we're not evil at all". Sorry, but any nation with secret police or laws requiring secret police, even if you call them "plainclothesmen" or "undercover agents", is a police state.

Granted, liberals are tearing all that down and replacing it with the sort of self indulgent crap that invariably leads to a sense of entitlement about property and ultimately a dictatorship class, but, they haven't been successful yet.

Had me up until here, man... "liberals" have built this country as much as "conservatives" have...

Granted, liberals are tearing all that down and replacing it with the sort of self indulgent crap that invariably leads to a sense of entitlement about property and ultimately a dictatorship class, but, they haven't been successful yet.

Right. North Korea and Iran got where they are because of EVUL LIBRULS. Name one single society in which property entitlement from a progressively wealthier population led to a totalitarian dictatorship.

Anyway, the GP was commenting about news media. Someone's come up with a creepy spying technology that involves 1) doing BIZARRE MIND CONTROL on living things (near as I can tell, site is/.'d) and 2) has significant anti-civil-libertarian implications. The GP pointed out, quite rightly, that the double-

Still waiting for the "omg. think of the children dept" and "omg terrorists are everywhere dept." to start wiring presumed dangerous people.

Just think of the benefits, if anything bad happens the department can just push the big red button and every dangerous man in the country automatically stops whatever they are doing and walks to the detention camp/holding cell until the the dept. in charge have figured out who had done it.

Brilliant! I can't wait for this system to get applied in a wider area than

Their control method seems very crude to me. They have no control over the bugs little brain at all. If you want it to take off, give it an electric jolt, and it will fly away. Like hitting cow with a stick. Sure, that works. If you want it to stop, give it a bigger jolt, and it will drop out of the air. Like hitting a someone over the head with a bigger stick. Left and right: shock one wing so it will twitch and not work properly for a moment while the other wing goes on, and voila, steering. This is not

Is it just me or does anyone else think messing with creatures in this way is off-the-scale barbaric and shouldn't be done whatever the reason?

It really scares me that there's apprarently no limit to the depths governments and universities will sink in the name of money or whats laughably called 'defence' (read: to kill more people more efficiently).

How far will mankind go towards the worst visions of the future before enough decent people say 'no more'?

While I don't agree with the slippery slope argument, the AC has a point. All responses to him at this point have used the killing metaphor, but I don't think that's appropriate. This process is more akin to torture.

We have rules for war that disallow such things as dumdum bullets designed to maim the hell out of people. We have rules against torture (though the US doesn't seem to concern itself with following them). It's clear to me that even in situations where killing is sanctioned, such as war, we d

I'll admit it creeps me out. Not that I have any problem with slicing and dicing bugs for science, but the whole area of brain control of any species, especially when that research is government funded really bothers me.

Actually, it was meant to be a take-off of newsmax. Besides, I do not endorse racist content in any way. Just because you hate white people doesn't mean that I have to.

because it's blindingly obvious to the rest of us

Whose the "rest of us"? Liberals don't speak for the people, they want to arrange them in a way they think is best for them, but you don't echo their demands, believe in their culture, or support their causes, you know, that guns, god, and religion, c